Harvard to Conduct Human Cloning
Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston are collaborating together to begin experiments in human cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer). Their purpose is to try and obtain patient specific embryonic stem cells--a feat claimed to have been done by Woo-suk Hwang in South Korea, but he is now under indictment for fraud regarding that particular claim and ancillary fund raising activities. Private money is being used.
Only time will tell whether human clones will actually be created. But at least the Harvard experimenters are admitting that they are creating human embryonic life for the purpose of destroying it. Mainstream media, particularly the New York Times and the Kansas City Star, take note!
"Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer involves removing nuclei, which contain the cellular DNA (genes) from egg cells, and replacing them with the nuclei of donor cells. The resulting cell is subject to a chemical, or electrical, charge that triggers cell division and the creation of an embryo genetically identical to the donor of the nuclei."
In other words, SCNT does not create stem cells, as some media reports have it. Rather, as a form of cloning, it creates new life through asexual means. Destroying these nascent embryos for use in stem cell research is merely one potential use of the embryos, not the result of the procedure itself.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:41 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Does this research skirt the ban on human cloning because the embryos are destroyed?
papijoe
There is no federal ban on human cloning. Legislation to do so is being held up in the Senate by my Senator Harry Reid. He supports a so-called ban that would redefine cloning to say that cloning doesn't occur until the clone has been implanted into a uterus. Hence he opposes closing with this verbal sleight of hand. The Brownback-Landrieu bill, a mirror image of the Weldon-Stupak bill passed again by the House, would ban all human cloning in which a new human entity is created.
The only federal ban relating to human cloning is not a ban on cloning, but a ban on federal funding of research involving stem cells taken from human embryos (cloned or natural) destroyed after August 2001. This would only ban federal-not state-funding of stem cells taken from cloned human beings. California has committed itself to $3 billion worth of taxpayer funds which will involve cloning for research.
There may be a state ban or two like the one in New Jersey. But it's worse than Reid's ban. That "cloning ban" defines cloning this way: "As used in this section, "cloning of a human being" means the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual." L.2003,c.203,s.3
In New Jersey cloning hasn't occured until after birth-sometime in the newborn period when a new human individual emerges. Until that new individual emerges, researchers would be able to use “cadaveric” (the bill/law’s term) tissue for research and transplantation purposes without penalty as long as there aren't financial incentives-THAT would make it really bad. So their only prohibition is that you can't let a cloned human last too much longer after birth or else you are guilty of cloning an subject to a crime of the first degree.
Call it what you want, but that's fetal farming.
So cloning is perfectly legal in the United States for any purposes, but you can't get funding for embryonic stem cell research involving cells derived from embryos killed after August 8 or 9, 2001.
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